


Communication

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Monsters Play Games [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Asexuality Spectrum, Biting, Communication, Consent Issues, Kissing, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Power Dynamics, Power Exchange, Size Difference, Unhealthy Relationships, Wrestling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-23
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:17:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21918853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: Look, they'retrying.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Series: Monsters Play Games [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1578574
Comments: 23
Kudos: 369





	Communication

Jon was shaking as they stumbled into the flat together, but try as Martin had to offer to prop him up, to support him under his arms or his shoulders, Jon had only become frustrated, had shoved his hands off and rushed quicker up the stairs. He wouldn’t stand for being confined in the lift, but his knees were so weak he fell on every sixth stair, and Martin knew that later tonight, once he’d calmed down, he’d want to get a proper look at Jon’s legs to see that none of the grazes were too bad.

(He knew, in a distant, distasteful way, that they wouldn’t be too bad then, even if they were now.

Jon’s body didn’t get injured the way it used to.

For that matter, nor did Martin’s.)

Martin didn’t crowd him once they were inside, and Jon went stumbling to the sofa, falling onto his knees onto the lemon-slice yellow rug and burying his face against one of the woollen blankets thrown over the leather, fisting his hands into it and squeezing them tightly, dragging at it. Martin watched him, impassive, then turned the thermostat up, stepped into the kitchen, and turned on the kettle.

As he listened to the music of the steam inside, stared at the polished chrome and duck egg’s blue of the thing (matched, of course, to the toaster and the microwave in the same shade, all of which had been virtually untouched until Martin had moved in), he reflected that it was all too easy, to be alone, after a day like today.

The instinct was there.

To slip off into another room, to slip off into another dimension entirely, and let Jon alone to shiver and shake on the rug until he came back to himself, and for Martin to take his own peace. He’d like a bit of peace. It would be so easy, wouldn’t it? It would be so easy, to just…

“Martin?” Jon called from the living room. His voice was weak. Wanting. It was the call of a man that did not actually _expect_ him to come.

Martin did not respond, initially. He almost felt bad for it, but the guilt was an echo of the proper emotion as he poured already-ground coffee into one of the cups, and set a bag of chai into the other. The kettle bubbled merrily as he poured hot water into each, and he envisioned the bubbling water that gathered on the coast, when waves crashed hard onto uneven rock, jagged and frothing.

“Martin?” Jon asked again. If anything, his voice was weaker now, scarcely more than a whisper.

He would have felt _so_ guilty, once upon a time – he would have felt guilty just for leaving the room, let alone for letting Jon sit in it as he called for Martin, terrified and so alone. That was how Jon felt, Martin knew it – he was frightened, and alone, not inured to it the way that Martin was.

All those watching eyes, but they didn’t make up for _companionship_.

“I’m here, Jon,” Martin said, and was surprised to find his own voice was _impatient_ – not merely impatient, but impatiently indulgent, as though Jon were a nuisance Martin was putting up with out of affection, and that wasn’t true at all. He _loved_ Jon, Jon was his, and now there was a twinge of guilt, once that Martin clutched onto with both hands even as he picked up the mugs and moved quickly back into the living room. “Sorry,” he said, genuinely – not because he was weak, desperate to pander to Jon’s feelings, but because he’d been less kind than he prided himself on being.

Jon was staring up at him from the floor, and Martin got the impression that Jon didn’t want Martin to kneel with him on the rug. It was etched in the lines of his face, his downturned, parted lips, his wide and watering eyes. He sank down onto the sofa, instead, setting his tea aside, and with both hands he brought the mug of steaming black coffee to Jon’s lips.

(It didn’t matter that it was too hot. It never mattered, anymore, and Martin knew that Jon liked the scald.)

Jon drank, his eyes closing, and Martin let out a low shushing noise at the way Jon’s whole body relaxed, the tautness and stiffness going out of his shoulders, his body no longer shaking quite so violently. Martin set the mug delicately aside, and then he cupped his hands, palms still warm from the mug, around Jon’s cheeks.

“It’s alright,” Jon said, hoarsely. “You don’t have to be sorry. We are… we are both what we are, Martin.”

“You more than me,” Martin said softly.

“That doesn’t mean you deserve less slack than I do,” Jon replied. His eyes were still closed, and his hands, pockmarked and scarred all over, but for the skin that was unnaturally smooth and left with the sheen that a good burn left behind it, delicately touched the outsides of Martin’s wrists. “Can we— Do you mind if we…”

“Yeah,” Martin assented, not so cruel as to force him to finish the question as it meandered off into the ether. “Yeah, we can.”

It was… Not a habit. Habit was too regular, but it was _somewhat_ regular. They didn’t usually, after a day like today, after a hard day – usually, Jon just wanted to throw himself into work, or lie near to Martin and watch him do something, when Martin wouldn’t let him work. Martin keenly remembered the last time, when they’d staggered home together and Martin had dragged Jon under the hot spray of the shower, until the water didn’t come away red any longer.

Martin had sat on this very rug, done a jigsaw on the coffee table, and the whole time – and it had been _hours upon hours_, the whole of the day, because he’d done it start-to-finish and only stopped to take their takeaway off the delivery man – Jon had laid on the floor beside him, unmoving, wrapped in a blanket he claimed to hate because it was printed with the TARDIS, but always wrapped himself in anyway. He’d lain there with his cheek pressed into Martin’s shoulder and stared at the jigsaw as Martin had completed it.

(Jon never joined in when Martin did a jigsaw. He said it would be unfair.)

Suffice it to say, play was normally for good days, often during good weeks. When they were both relaxed, and they were up to it.

Tonight, though—

It was clear that Jon needed the distraction.

Martin didn’t carry him to the bathroom, but he did put his arm around Jon’s waist, and Jon leaned heavily on him. Martin would tease him for it, but it was abundantly clear that Jon genuinely needed the support, his knees still weak, his legs still like jelly. After, Martin would massage his calves and his thighs – they’d run a _lot_ today, both of them, and Jon wasn’t as suited to it as Martin was.

They sat on the floor of the shower together, Martin not for the first time wishing that Jon had a bath, although Jon tried to get Martin to sit on the shower chair so that Jon could kneel at his feet. Martin wouldn’t allow for it, of course, not on the hard surface of the shower, even with the rubber mat there: he sat with his back leant against the green tile and his thighs spread so that Jon could sit cross-legged between them, bracketed between Martin’s knees and safely confined there.

He struggled, at first, but the dirt was caked all the way up his forearms and clinging to his ankles too – anywhere below his neck where it had managed to insinuate itself under his clothes. Martin used a sponge to scrub it away, and when Jon had fidgeted and hissed his protests, snapping that Martin had never been that thorough, and Jon had no expectation that he should start now, Martin had ignored him.

Jon had gone quiet, after a while, and it was only once Martin got the last of the black dregs to drain away from around his bony wrists that he’d mumbled an apology.

“I’m not done yet,” Martin reminded him, and he saw all the fight come back to Jon’s body all at once, furious and stiff and ready to shout, before he’d deflated like a popped balloon, and let his hand go limp in Martin’s grip as Martin started with the small brush on his fingernails.

Jon inhaled shakily, his eyes closing very tightly, as Martin worked.

The first time they’d done something like this – Martin forcing Jon to get clean from an entity’s filth when he didn’t want to be touched tenderly at all – he’d struggled far more desperately. That had been worse than just lingering dirt from the Buried, too – that had been a mix of web and desiccated, long-exsanguinated pieces of corpse, sticking all over his body. Jon had _screamed_, had tried to scratch Martin to pieces, to bite at him, had given up on using his body to fight back when he remembered that words would hurt more, and _then_ he’d started on Martin’s mother.

He was remembering that now: Martin could see the regret on his face.

“That wasn’t entirely you, you know,” Martin said, although they’d talked about it before, even as he picked up the tweezers from the side of the shower. “It was the Web.”

“And today was the Buried?” Jon asked, lowly. “Is anything ever my fault anymore, Martin? Are you so insistent on forgiving me every hurt I do you?”

“When it’s not you doing it? Yeah, a bit,” Martin said, turning Jon’s hand over so that he could gently wash the brush underneath Jon’s thumbnail. Jon’s hands twitched, but he let Martin work on it. It was _easier_, when Jon had his eyes closed, but… “And when you are doing it? I don’t know. I think so, maybe. I— Sorry to turn a conversation about monsters into a conversation about commitment, but I think I’m sort of in this for the long-haul. I know that “both been turned into monsters” isn’t the same as “married on a beach in Hawaii”, but.”

Jon’s eyes opened, and he squinted at Martin, the water running in rivulets down his cheeks, his ears, soaking into his hair. Alright, he’d overplayed that a little bit. Eyes open _was_ much harder.

“Do you want to get married on a _beach_?” he asked. Not… not the expected question. Martin’s cheeks felt hot.

“Well, what were you envisioning? A quick, hurried ceremony at the registrar’s office?” Martin asked, arching his eyebrows. “Or were you thinking we do it at the Institute, let Georgie give you away, have Elias officiate?”

Jon’s expression was a picture-perfect display of indignation as Martin said, “Little pinch!” and pulled the splinter out from under his ring finger’s nail.

Jon’s scream echoed off the shower walls and bathroom roof, and Martin caught his wrist before he could punch him with his other hand, shoving both his hands down at his sides: Jon was too close to Martin to uncross his legs, and Martin wouldn’t let him lean forward to use his teeth.

He didn’t know how long the thrashing lasted for, but he did let Jon go for a second to turn off the water, and by the time Jon was done, they were both mostly dry. Maybe forty minutes, maybe an hour.

(And Martin knew it was cold, to be drip-drying in the shower room, but he didn’t shiver, and he didn’t really feel it, because—

You know why.)

When Jon came down from it, he didn’t actually go limp again. He set his jaw, his eyes tired and angry, and Martin stroked a hand up his back, pressing on the muscles.

“It’s okay,” Martin said.

“No, it isn’t,” Jon said, and his eyes went dark for a moment, his hands clenching, then opening again. “I need to go out and—”

“No going out,” Martin said. “You’ll meet him again. Do something dreadful when it comes to that, not now. Now, you’re going to relax, you’re going to take a night’s sleep, and you can go monstrous after.”

“I didn’t see it,” Jon said tightly. “Did you?”

“When I started with the nail brush,” Martin murmured.

“You could have _told_ me,” Jon snapped.

“Yeah,” Martin said, shrugging. It occurred to him that once upon a time, he would have felt guilty over this, too. “Because telling you things always goes _so_ well.”

He thought that Jon was going to bite him again, when he lunged, and he let it come, but instead Jon’s mouth crushed against his in a kiss. Martin kissed him back, tangled a hand in Jon’s still slightly damp hair and let Jon crawl closer.

When Jon’s hands went lower, though, Martin grabbed his wrist, leaning back.

“Let me,” Jon said, and Martin shook his head.

“We talked about boundaries before,” Martin said softly. “What you’re comfortable with, what you’re not. You said you didn’t want me to touch your cock, or for you to touch mine.”

“I want to suck you off,” Jon snapped, voice rising in anger, and Martin leaned back further, shaking his head.

“Jon, no,” he said, and he straightened Jon’s fingers, looking at his fingernails again, but he kept them cropped short, and Martin had definitely cleaned out all of the dirt. He’d already checked Jon’s ears, his feet, even—

Jon was kissing him again, cupping the sides of his neck, and Martin gently tilted them out of the shower, pulling him to his feet. He didn’t push Jon away as he dragged a towel over his legs, getting rid of the last of the moisture there, and he led Jon into the bedroom. Jon tried to slide his hands down Martin’s thighs, and Martin slapped his wrists, this time, made him hiss as they broke apart for a second and fell back onto the bed.

“You don’t like that,” Martin said.

“Obviously,” Jon growled, “I _do_.”

“No,” Martin said, “you want something to distract you, because you’re overwhelmed and you feel vulnerable and you’re angry, and—”

“I’m not your _pet_! I don’t need you to analyse me and tell me what emotions I’m feeling, to stop me from making my own fucking decisions, Martin, and I _want to suck your cock.”_

“Well, it’s my cock, Jon, and I decide who sucks it,” Martin retorted, and Jon let out a vague, loud noise of frustration. Martin touched his face, making Jon look at him, and he saw the desperation in his eyes, the want there. It wasn’t sexual want, Martin didn’t think. Jon… He did _feel_ that, sort of, maybe not in the way that Martin did, but that wasn’t _this_, this was just—

A need to have it all washed away.

“Later,” Martin said softly, “I’m happy to talk about it, but you set boundaries, and you set them _strictly_. You don’t like someone else’s hand or mouth on your cock, and you don’t want to touch mine. That’s what you said, that you’re happy to watch me get myself off, but that you don’t want to touch it. Jon, you said before you freak out when there’s a cock in your mouth because it makes you feel like you’re going to choke.”

Jon swallowed. Set his jaw. Thinned his lips.

“Because that’s what you want, right? You want to feel like I’ll hurt you? I’ll hurt you, Jon, I’ll give you what you need, but not like that.”

“You’ve fantasied about it,” Jon said. “Me sucking your cock.”

“Christ, you’re like a dog with a bone,” Martin muttered.

“Apparently not,” Jon replied, and Martin laughed despite himself, shoving Jon in the chest and pushing him back onto the bed. He grabbed Jon’s pyjamas from where they were folded on the ottoman when he saw Jon shiver, and he watched as Jon pulled them on, even as he got up to check the radiator was on. It was. It felt warm enough, too, and Jon reached for him as Martin came back, tangling their fingers and letting Jon tug him down into a kiss. “Please? I’m calm, Martin, I’m calm. I want to—”

“And I _don’t_ want you to,” Martin replied, equally seriously. Jon exhaled, almost like he was steeling himself, and then he pulled Martin’s hand down— “_No_,” Martin said.

“_Please_,” Jon said, and there was more than a little compulsion in his voice when he said, “Martin, I need it, just _let_ me—”

He stopped when Martin’s hand closed around his throat, squeezing, and Martin said, sharply, firmly, “You don’t do that to me, Jon. Not _ever_.”

“You won’t listen to me otherwise,” Jon snapped.

“Sorry you feel that way. The answer’s still no.”

“You said you _wanted_ to—”

“To play! To do a bit of a scene, let you relax! Not abuse you until you forget what happened today! Stop trying to drive, Jon, stop trying to be in control. Let _me_ take charge, and let me make you feel good.”

Jon didn’t say anything, this time. He opened his mouth, then closed it, then finally nodded his head.

Martin kissed him, massaging Jon’s throat where he’d gripped it tightly, and that was just… how they were, for a while. Jon spread his hands on Martin’s chest, leaned up to kiss him, and he _relaxed_, went warm and buttery under Martin’s hands, under his mouth.

“You ever do that to me again,” Martin said softly, when Jon was finally relaxed, when he was sprawled out on the bed, kissed to bliss, “and I’ll drop you into the Lonely until you scream yourself hoarse begging me to pull you out again. And I _know_ you, Jon, you won’t be able to weasel your way out like you did with Peter.”

Jon shivered, showing his teeth in something that was almost a smile, and for a second, Martin saw the two of them exactly as they were, a feast of eyes scarred over and over, caked in dirt and mud, drowned in fog that turned to web and water in places.

“Promise?” Jon asked, and Martin laughed as he leaned to kiss him once again.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks so much for reading! Feel free to hit up [my ask on Tumblr.](http://patricianandclerk.tumblr.com/ask) Requests open.
> 
> I have a Magnus Archives discord! [Join here!](https://discord.gg/c9aZWDz)


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